Lost in Mediocrity

I spent so much more time on games that weren’t Time Wasters this week that I’m almost surprised I had time to fit one in. With Halo 4 being released, League of Legends releasing its updated Twisted Treeline map, Episode 4 of The Walking Dead (look forward to that review) and my third copy of Final Fantasy X (Insert snide remark from Hargosh) coming in from Amazon I was a busy man. Being that it’s my solemn duty to my fellow Time Wasters to give them a review I dragged myself away from these distractions, sadly though I wasn’t pleased.

Lost in Night is another entry into the already flooded market of match three games. Now I love to sit down and lose track of time with Chuzzle or Bejeweled as much as any other gamer, but that wasn’t the case this time.

As mentioned the game play of Lost in Night is a match three type of game. There’s Swap, where the player must change the positions of two adjacent symbols in order to connect three symbols into a line, Chain, a game type based around connecting groups of three or more symbols by dragging the mouse over them, and Group, where clicking on any group of three connected symbols will destroy them. With three different ways to play one would think that there would be no end to the fun, but this just isn’t the case. The difficulty of Lost in Night is right around that of a rocket scientist doing basic addition and subtraction.

The game’s lackluster excuse for power ups, or rather, their uselessness in game, is just sad. Sure we have all the same basic power ups found in other popular match three games, destroy all of a certain symbol, wipe out an entire row of symbols, you know all that good stuff, but here there isn’t any place for them. Levels are completed so easily that by the time one would unlock a power up the level is but a couple clicks from being finished. Granted power up do move onto the next levels, but yet again the game is so easy that it’s actually a waste of time to stop and think about where to strategically place them when instead clicking randomly will get the job done faster.

I suppose I should tell you why exactly we are doing these match three games in the first place shouldn’t I? Well we have to build a fantastical woodland village on top of an absolutely delightful grassy knoll. No reasons as to why though, we just are. Other games of this genre are at least courteous enough to bring some sort of story along or *gasp* unique game play, but not Lost in Night.

Maybe I’m being a little hard on Lost in Night. After all it did pull me away from my other, more entertaining games. I just can’t help but feel that I lost a night of game play that could’ve been spent on much better games. That being said I think that answers the question. Lost in Night isn’t a fun and addicting game, if it was then I wouldn’t feel like I wasted my time but instead that I found a healthy distraction from my other focuses.

Well despite all my hatred I’m throwing out here on a very mediocre game, I will give props where props are due, it looks nice. Alright all the props have been given lets wrap this up.

Lost in Night takes the same match three game mechanics we’ve seen in thousands of other game in this genre and copies and pastes it, the only real difference is that it forgot to add any kind of challenge. This and the lack of any kind of narrative or story to fuel the player onto the objective left me with more than a lack of care for my goal of building that whimsical little village, but hey don’t forget everyone! It looks nice’okay let’s stop here.

Lost in Night gets what it deserves with 2 generic GiN Gems (we give the exquisite gems away to great games) out of 5!